The invention relates to cartoning systems and in particular to cartoning systems for shaping and loading a product into a carton.
Particulate products, such as dry cereal, are typically packaged using a cartoning system including a combination of machines. In a typical cartoning process, initially a vertical form fill machine is used to form a pouch for the product. In this stage of the packaging process, a plastic tube is wrapped around a vertical form, and a lower edge of the plastic tube is sealed to form a pouch. A pre-weighed amount of the product is introduced into the pouch, and an upper region of the plastic tube is sealed to form the top seal of an individual pouch. The filled pouch is then separated from the tube and transported downstream to a series of machines for loading the filled pouch into a carton.
Conventional cartoning systems include a product conveyor having a series of product buckets for transporting the product, such as the filled plastic pouch, to a confiner overlying the product conveyor. The confiner typically includes a series of inverted L shaped confiner elements, which are mounted over the incoming product buckets and cooperate with the product buckets to shape the product pouch. The product conveyor continues to transport the shaped pouch to position the pouch along a barrel loader. The barrel loader includes a series of pusher elements which drive the product from the product bucket into an adjacent carton. A representative cartoning system including a product conveyor, an overlying confiner, and a barrel loader is discussed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,932,983 to Hughes.
While useful, such cartoning systems can suffer various disadvantages. The separate components of the cartoning system can be relatively complex and expensive. In addition, because the confiner overlies the product conveyor, the combined system can have significant height. Because of the combined height of the system, operators on opposite sides of the system cannot readily communicate with one another. Further, the product pouches and cartons are loaded onto the product conveyor using automated systems. Occasionally, the automated system introduces a product pouch into a product bucket incorrectly so that the pouch is not properly oriented for loading into an adjacent carton. If a pouch is not properly oriented, the pouch can become stuck or jammed within the system, thereby requiring the system to shut down while an operator locates and corrects the product jam. With conventional overlying confiner systems, this process can be cumbersome and time consuming, and thus can result in lost production time.